Christopher McDougall

author of Born to Run and Natural Born Heroes

And the debut BTR Quiz Show winner is…

My sentimental favorite for first place is E. Stewart Moritz, who not only got the answer, but really got it:

Mark Twain just springs off the page, doesn’t he? Nobody else writes quite like that. Alas, it’s google-able, and I only just checked my RSS feed, so I know I’m too late.
Still, what a great passage — flip it around and you can see running man stalking a confused animal that can’t figure out how that slow-jogging upright thing keeps catching up to him!
Very much enjoyed your book. And, no coincidence, I’m enjoying running again, so thanks for that.
Best,
-S

Stewart is dead on: The correct answer is Mark Twain, in Roughing It.

But what Stewart gained in literary appreciation he lost in speed. He came in a few places out of the running, as did ex-NBA superstar Allen Iverson
until I took a second look at the name and saw it was Adam.

Kim McManus would have been third. But Kim, keep in mind for future quizzes that you really can’t end an answer with “I think.” Nor preface it, Nils Krutzfeldt, with “Sounds like.” Or, Carl de Leon, answer a question with a bunch of other questions: “jack london?” “mark twain?” You step into this Battle Royale, be ready to fight.

Ryan Berg made an admirable showing, considering the question popped up for him at around 7 in the morning in Taiwan, where he’s also dealing with the stigma of being the lone Fivefingered cowboy in his running posse.

But our winner is ….
Daniel Greenberg, whose strategy of nixing any kind of niceties in his email and blazing straight to the answer probably gained him the crucial few minutes necessary to edge out Michael Pinkney of Canada’s teamrunningfree.

Ok. Thanks to Stewart’s heads up about Google, today’s quiz will be utterly (or almost) uncrackable by Internet. I’ll be posting it in a video here and on Youtube a little later this morning.